#031: The 4P Email Framework

Read time: 5 minutes

Welcome to the Succession newsletter where 350+ life science sales reps improve their skills in 5 minutes per week. If you’re getting value from these newsletters, we'd love it if you could forward it along to your sales colleagues. If you’re new here, subscribe below.

We ran a prospecting messaging webinar this week to help reps increase their positive reply rates with more compelling messages.

So far the feedback has been great!

If you want to watch the recording or download the slides, just use the link below.

If you struggle to get replies from your prospecting efforts, this newsletter is for you.

It can be frustrating to put time and energy into a well-researched prospecting email only to never get a response. It can feel like you’re just spinning your wheels. Lot’s of activity with nothing to show for it. You’d prefer a “no” over the unknown.

Did they read my email? Did it resonate? Why didn’t they reply?

We’ll dive into the 10 questions you have to answer just to get a response. The 4P framework is designed to answer each of those questions to improve your chance of receiving a reply.

4P Email Framework

The following 4 line email framework will help you increase reply rates. Each “P” is its own line of the email.

• Personalize: A unique observation that is relevant to the person you are reaching out to.

• Problem: Call out a likely problem they are facing that relates to the observation.

• Propose: Show them how you can uniquely solve that problem.

• Prompt: Soft call-to-action that invites a response.

Let’s talk about the psychology of why this framework works.

4 things you have to get right to get a reply

1: Deliverability

You have to make sure your email is delivered to their primary inbox. If it ends up in spam or the promotions tab, then the likelihood they respond drops dramatically. We already covered this in detail in this video on our podcast this week.

2: Get them to open the email

You could write the perfect email, but if it never gets opened, you won’t get a response. When someone decides to open an email or not, the 3 questions they ask themself are:

1. Who is sending it?

2. What’s the subject line?

3. What’s in the preview text?

If this is a cold email, there won’t be any familiarity with who you are. One way to overcome this is to connect on LinkedIn before sending the email. This at least increases the chances that they have seen your name before.

The combination of the subject line and preview text is extremely important. A short subject line allows for a longer preview text window. If the subject line looks like an email they should read and the first sentence of your email is both personalized and relevant, they are more likely to open the email.

But if your first line is wasted with text like “I hope this finds you well” or immediately pitches your product, this will indicate to the recipient that it’s a sales email and I should delete it.

3: Get them to read the email

So we got them to open the email. Now they’ll ask themselves 3 different questions.

1. How long will this take to read?

2. Is this relevant to me?

3. Why should I read the next line?

If someone opens your email and it’s a wall of text, they’ll likely just delete it because it’s going to take too long to read the whole thing. We recommend every email should be under 125 words, but if you can keep it under 100 it’s even better. There is data from Lavender that shows shorter emails have a direct correlation to higher reply rates.

If they decide to read the email, they need to know it’s relevant to them and their challenges. If the first line is both personalized and relevant, they will be more likely to read the next line. This next line needs to call out a problem they are currently facing. People want to solve their problems, they don’t want to be pitched products. If you get them to say “yes i have that problem” then they will be receptive to your proposed solution.

4: Get them to reply to the email

Your email has successfully been read! Now they recipient has to decide if it’s worth the effort of replying. The next set of questions they ask themselves are:

1. Could this help me?

2. Is it worth responding?

3. What are they asking for?

If they have the problem you mentioned and your proposed solution seems like it will solve the problem, they’ll agree that your solution could help them. But it won’t always be a high priority problem that needs to be solved now. So if your call to action is to schedule a 30 minute call, it might not be worth their time to meet right now. They have other more pressing things to deal with.

This is why we want to use a “soft call-to-action”. These CTAs don’t require a lot of effort from the recipient. The data shows that soft CTAs get 30% more replies than asking for a meeting. Once you’ve successfully piqued their curiosity and a conversation has started, you can ask for a meeting. Here are a few examples:

• Interested in learning more?

• Would you like to see the data?

• Do you think this could be helpful?

There you have it. The 4 things you have to get right to get a reply. This is why we recommend the 4P framework.

• Personalize: Get them to open and read the message

• Problem: Determine if the message is relevant to them

• Propose: Show them how your solution can help

• Prompt: Give them a low-effort reason to respond

If you want to see some messaging examples or go deeper on these topics, watch the prospecting messaging webinar or join Succession and take some of our messaging and prospecting courses.

Special Offer: If you’ve made it this far, you can use the coupon code NEWSLETTER to get 20% off an individual Succession membership.

Recommended Products & Tools: We’ve used every one of these products and can highly recommend them to you. Everything from CRMs to AI tools.

20-Day Prospecting Challenge: This is a daily prospecting challenge to help find more opportunities and exceed your quota. One email. One action. Every day for 20 days. Ready to take the challenge?

Join SAMPS: A free community of sales and marketing professionals of the sciences. They run in-person events and put on regular webinars packed with great content.

Give us feedback: If you love the content we’re putting out, could you do us a favor and take 28 seconds to write us a short testimonial? Or let us know how we can improve.

1. Succession for Reps: A skill development platform for life science sales reps who want to improve their sales skills, exceed their quota, and take the next step in their career.

2. Succession for Teams: If you’re a sales leader who’s frustrated with reps living in reactive mode and either not proactively generating new opportunities or letting prospects go dark, reach out to learn more about our team plans.

3. AI-Powered Prospecting: We’ll build you an AI-powered prospecting machine to book qualified sales meetings with biotech and pharma companies.

4. Strategy Call: Need more than training? Want help implementing and executing your sales strategy? In a 30-minute call, we will assess your company’s current situation and identify growth opportunities.